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Post by engarde on Feb 17, 2015 16:51:50 GMT
I got bored on PC with half that, and in mobile I'm around 5k each world - nothing else do do aside from breed...
I do have impressive caches of belief/ore and crops though...
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Post by Gmr Leon on Feb 17, 2015 16:56:28 GMT
Hey, Gmr Leon, are you going to update this thread? We've provided a few more important links. Of course, there's a long way to go to fill in the gaps and thread the entirety of events together. Eventually. Not too long after posting this I got hit with a veritable plague that I'm still trying to work through. I've been keeping up, but haven't felt my head on straight lately to do much besides that. My body's been running some heavy detox trying to help my condition improve, but whatever it is I have, it's being clingy as hell. |
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Post by 13thGeneral on Feb 17, 2015 17:25:26 GMT
Hey, Gmr Leon, are you going to update this thread? We've provided a few more important links. Of course, there's a long way to go to fill in the gaps and thread the entirety of events together. Eventually. Not too long after posting this I got hit with a veritable plague that I'm still trying to work through. I've been keeping up, but haven't felt my head on straight lately to do much besides that. My body's been running some heavy detox trying to help my condition improve, but whatever it is I have, it's being clingy as hell. Totally understandable. Get some rest, stay hydrated, and focus on eliminating those Meanies.  Seriously, hope you feel better. |
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Post by hardly on Feb 17, 2015 18:26:49 GMT
Thanks Fabs, as always your honesty is greatly appreciated.
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Post by earlparvisjam on Feb 17, 2015 20:03:00 GMT
Feb/March 2014, where very specific claims were made as to the nature of hubworld and its pending implementation That's when we were trying to shoehorn the multiplayer into the non-mmo friendly network code. Actually, to be more precise, I spent January '14 doing performance work on mobile an desktop, and then spent two / three months (can't actually remember) on the hubworld code before concluding it was impossible with the given tech. We stopped hubworld for a while to concentrate on mobile release, and haven't really had the resources (updates and Android sucked us dry of man hours) to return to it. Also we have a new network lead who agrees that the network tech and the design for hubworld, just won't work. We need a new design that pays for the tech we need to make it happen. I'm confused how this all played out. For a game that had pvp in a prototype before KS went green, it should have had its networking code baked in from the start. I just don't understand why the game framework was designed without consideration for network play from day 1. The game was billed with mmo as its foundation. God of Gods doesn't seem to have been in the initial development plan and that's just... wrong... It's both disturbing and satisfying when my speculation is found to be exactly what was happening: |
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Post by bed on Feb 17, 2015 20:26:29 GMT
With all respect to the development team (I know how hard games can be), I get the impression that much of the problems with Godus were technical in nature, and perhaps somewhat comes down to the highly ambitious goals with a development team without the required experience to deliver it. This blame would fall on whoever put together the team in determining requirements. Experience costs $$ and I'd guess this impacted things greatly. /2c
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Post by hardly on Feb 17, 2015 20:38:04 GMT
How many indie MMOs are there? Not many I suggest. Low purchase price + no scope for ongoing fees = failure.
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Post by greay on Feb 17, 2015 23:32:45 GMT
The Steam network code was developed in july - october 2013 by myself and an intern. We saw the servers come to a standstill when we launched (well, actually about four days after we launched). The cause we only later found out was that the pirate copies started doing weird things that the servers didn't expect, and caused them to throw a hissy fit. This lead to a change to remote networking from the PC build. Yes, you really can blame pirates for your inability to play multiplayer. Given that we didn't have any experience of handling PC level piracy in our two person network team, the decision was made to dump our work as a good try, and hire in middleware to solve the problem now our target platform was mobile. The thought was that it would be impossible to release a mobile game without networking. That middleware has had its own problems, mostly down to the server code not being aware of how Godus works in any way, but it did let us release a version of the game where saves were in the cloud, and you could do IAP. Now, we're stuck with a network stack that doesn't handle MMO style gameplay, which is core for Hubworld. When we get the gameplay features we need to make hubworld, we're going to need a while to add in network support all over again. See, now that kind of information sharing would have been great at the time as things actually happen, rather than a year and half or however long later. At least then it gives context to why Molyneux was seemingly talking about things that just up and vanished into thin air and were never spoken of ever again with the only indication that it doesn't even exist now being a side comment about only just starting to think about starting work on something previous said was already in place. Nonetheless, thanks for sharing what happened now.  I honestly think that all of the shitstorm we're seeing now could have been prevented if this sort of information had been shared when these things happened. Most of it seems to focus on the tried & true "Molyneux overpromises" storyline, but everyone understands that troubles arise & things change during development. We all knew the roadmap was tenuous at best (I think it was pretty clearly communicated that it might change when it was shared) but we only ever found out about changes after the fact, and never why. That's why people are upset, I think. As far as the timeframe... Yeah, it was wildly unrealistic. But estimation is hard, and as a dev myself I'm very familiar with "this feature is nearly ready to release, it just needs a couple small tweaks and it's ready to go" suddenly turning into "this entire feature needs to be re-written from scratch" because of a seemingly insignificant at first issue. And if that's communicated, I think that most people would understand. But more than just "you should have done X", this sort of information is just interesting to hear, regardless. I love reading about this stuff. |
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Raspofabs
Former 22Cans staff
Posts: 227 
I like: coding, high peat single malts, ... , yeah, that's about it.
I don't like: object oriented design, and liver.
Steam: raspofabs
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Post by Raspofabs on Feb 18, 2015 0:25:09 GMT
How many indie MMOs are there? Not many I suggest. Low purchase price + no scope for ongoing fees = failure. Ding Ding, bingo. Expertise was there, just the request from CTO was make it a peer to peer mmo (to make it affordable). If you ever see one of those in the wild, let me know, because I am pretty sure it can't be done. |
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Post by hardly on Feb 18, 2015 1:15:46 GMT
How many indie MMOs are there? Not many I suggest. Low purchase price + no scope for ongoing fees = failure. Ding Ding, bingo. Expertise was there, just the request from CTO was make it a peer to peer mmo (to make it affordable). If you ever see one of those in the wild, let me know, because I am pretty sure it can't be done. 2 and 1/2 years of development, kickstarter, God of gods and recent interviews makes this issue really complex. However, if I was trying to recover this situation I would probably form a game council of kickstarter backers, put a plan to them to turn GODUS into a single player sandbox game, try and get their sign off and then proceed with that. I just can't see how a multiplayer happens that everyone can live with and if multiplayer does eventuate it's likely to be at the expense of single player in terms of design and in terms of resources. |
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Post by hardly on Feb 18, 2015 1:31:05 GMT
While Peter got roasted for failing to deliver multiplayer and we were happy to see that happen because we perceive there has been a misappropriation of resources (PC v Mobile), Konrad's statement that multiplayer was unlikely to happen was actually incredibly helpful for moving the project forward and relieving it of the burden that hubworld had begun. The fact that Peter then had to reverse this position to sooth the media has some pretty major implications that I'm sure we are only just beginning to see.
Anyway good luck guys.
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Post by Gmr Leon on Feb 18, 2015 2:21:56 GMT
Ding Ding, bingo. Expertise was there, just the request from CTO was make it a peer to peer mmo (to make it affordable). If you ever see one of those in the wild, let me know, because I am pretty sure it can't be done. 2 and 1/2 years of development, kickstarter, God of gods and recent interviews makes this issue really complex. However, if I was trying to recover this situation I would probably form a game council of kickstarter backers, put a plan to them to turn GODUS into a single player sandbox game, try and get their sign off and then proceed with that. I just can't see how a multiplayer happens that everyone can live with and if multiplayer does eventuate it's likely to be at the expense of single player in terms of design and in terms of resources. This is what I've never understood about the project and why I (foolishly) even bothered supporting it. To me, the whole hubworld idea was typical longshot goals, and as long as it didn't detract from the core experience (e.g. what you describe) I thought there would be a good game to be found eventually. Instead someone decided it was a fantastic idea to make a Hindenburg hot air balloon without considering the immediate consequences of trying to launch it. Everything goes down with an absurd vehicle like that. Everything. |
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tikigod
Master
Resistance is mean.
Posts: 115
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Post by tikigod on Feb 18, 2015 14:37:55 GMT
How many indie MMOs are there? Not many I suggest. Low purchase price + no scope for ongoing fees = failure. Ding Ding, bingo. Expertise was there, just the request from CTO was make it a peer to peer mmo (to make it affordable). If you ever see one of those in the wild, let me know, because I am pretty sure it can't be done. Not peer-to-peer but some years back (talking a few years before Star Citizen made the idea popular again) I was involved in the art side and pitching into design discussions to more firmly iron out ideas for a indie open persistent world space simulator MMO project that is still on-going development wise. forum.borderspace.net/Very ambitious MMO with a very large scope, and has been a few delays over the last year or so that I believe are entirely about getting the client<-> server infrastructure established properly so that things will be able to run quickly and minimising traffic activity where possible. It's also still on-going by a small team in their own time, with absolutely zero income coming in from the project whilst operating the dev server throughout. Why exactly the PTB within 22Cans would insist it should have to be P2P driven and cut off their own hands as a result is kind of baffling, especially if the goal at the time was still to create and maintain a persistent environment. |
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Raspofabs
Former 22Cans staff
Posts: 227
I like: coding, high peat single malts, ... , yeah, that's about it.
I don't like: object oriented design, and liver.
Steam: raspofabs
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Post by Raspofabs on Feb 18, 2015 14:42:56 GMT
Ding Ding, bingo. Expertise was there, just the request from CTO was make it a peer to peer mmo (to make it affordable). If you ever see one of those in the wild, let me know, because I am pretty sure it can't be done. Not peer-to-peer but some years back I was involved (on the art side and pitching into design discussions to more firmly iron out ideas) in a indie space simulator MMO project that is still on-going development wise. forum.borderspace.net/Very ambitious MMO with a very large scope, and has been a few delays over the last year or so entirely about getting the client<->server infrastructure established properly. But it's still on-going by a small team in their own time, with absolutely zero income coming in from the project. Good on them. Doing an MMO without a server just seems impossible to me. Technically we could make a game that had peer to peer networking core, and had persistence, but making it fit for purpose is impossible. The basic issue is, where do you store the state of the game? We got around this with a dumb storage server. Not an expensive game server, but a simple upload to shared storage. This has all the issues of threaded development, but with a much slower turnaround on seeing, and then fixing timing issues. The most compelling issue for not doing peer to peer MMO though is from the point of view of authority. There is no way you can make the game "fair". Without a fair game, people will never be willing to spend real money on it. Without being able to spend real money on it, it's very hard to quantify why you would want to release it. |
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tikigod
Master
Resistance is mean.
Posts: 115
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Post by tikigod on Feb 18, 2015 14:51:20 GMT
Not peer-to-peer but some years back I was involved (on the art side and pitching into design discussions to more firmly iron out ideas) in a indie space simulator MMO project that is still on-going development wise. forum.borderspace.net/Very ambitious MMO with a very large scope, and has been a few delays over the last year or so entirely about getting the client<->server infrastructure established properly. But it's still on-going by a small team in their own time, with absolutely zero income coming in from the project. Good on them. Doing an MMO without a server just seems impossible to me. Technically we could make a game that had peer to peer networking core, and had persistence, but making it fit for purpose is impossible. The basic issue is, where do you store the state of the game? We got around this with a dumb storage server. Not an expensive game server, but a simple upload to shared storage. This has all the issues of threaded development, but with a much slower turnaround on seeing, and then fixing timing issues. The most compelling issue for not doing peer to peer MMO though is from the point of view of authority. There is no way you can make the game "fair". Without a fair game, people will never be willing to spend real money on it. Without being able to spend real money on it, it's very hard to quantify why you would want to release it. Exactly, that's why I find the notion that you guys were tasked with having to make it peer to peer driven very baffling... not saying you guys dropped the ball, but more that whoever was in charge of directing you all in that area at the time really could do with being talked to about what the actual objectives to achieve in the game are against what is remotely practical.  Hopefully that specification is no longer a requirement for you guys actually working on implementation? |
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Raspofabs
Former 22Cans staff
Posts: 227
I like: coding, high peat single malts, ... , yeah, that's about it.
I don't like: object oriented design, and liver.
Steam: raspofabs
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Post by Raspofabs on Feb 18, 2015 15:05:51 GMT
Good on them. Doing an MMO without a server just seems impossible to me. Technically we could make a game that had peer to peer networking core, and had persistence, but making it fit for purpose is impossible. The basic issue is, where do you store the state of the game? We got around this with a dumb storage server. Not an expensive game server, but a simple upload to shared storage. This has all the issues of threaded development, but with a much slower turnaround on seeing, and then fixing timing issues. The most compelling issue for not doing peer to peer MMO though is from the point of view of authority. There is no way you can make the game "fair". Without a fair game, people will never be willing to spend real money on it. Without being able to spend real money on it, it's very hard to quantify why you would want to release it. Exactly, that's why I find the notion that you guys were tasked with having to make it peer to peer driven is baffling... not saying you guys dropped the ball, but more that whoever was in charge of directing you all in that area at the time really could do with being talked to. Hopefully that specification is no longer a requirement? If we were to restart hubworld development today, it would be, but the new network guy is not stupid and he has the experience and clout to negotiate it out when we do start on it again. |
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tikigod
Master
Resistance is mean.
Posts: 115
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Post by tikigod on Feb 18, 2015 15:07:05 GMT
Exactly, that's why I find the notion that you guys were tasked with having to make it peer to peer driven is baffling... not saying you guys dropped the ball, but more that whoever was in charge of directing you all in that area at the time really could do with being talked to. Hopefully that specification is no longer a requirement? If we were to restart hubworld development today, it would be, but the new network guy is not stupid and he has the experience and clout to negotiate it out when we do start on it again. Fingers crossed then, and good luck. |
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Post by Gmr Leon on Feb 18, 2015 20:18:42 GMT
Thanks for the responses guys. Added in: -Clarified last update in December 2013 was a status, not content, update. -Second silence between December 2013-February 2014 (roughly). -More specific date of Matthew's appearance. -Details on first settlement revamp. -Specific soft launch date (couldn't find that article to save my life, thanks!). -Roadmap mention added with notes on its rapid irrelevance and hubworld's further delay being attributed to our decision as a community. Not sure how pertinent some of the other things mentioned in 13thGeneral's post are, but a few I already had (albeit with different dates), so I mostly tried to stick with the bigger things. |
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Post by muumipeikko on Feb 19, 2015 2:43:36 GMT
It's kind of interesting, I always had my doubts about some of the team introduced, their experience and the transition from big studio to indie and I think Rastofabs has almost proved me right. In life it's not the successes which make you stronger, it's the failures and in seems to me that 22Can's have learnt a lot from Godus. The networking thing is a great example, Had anyone had the slightest clue they could have chimed up "Boss do you realise home many $mm that will cost in hardware alone" but it seem Peters way was to promise now and deal with it when we get their. Kind of fits the oath of the jnr developer "I swear as a jnr developer that I will never allocate enough time for me to write the code properly first time but I will always assume that their will be ample time for me to rewrite it later"
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tikigod
Master
Resistance is mean.
Posts: 115
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Post by tikigod on Feb 20, 2015 12:34:10 GMT
So I was just browsing the Unity3D Asset store, came across a thing called 'Photon Unity Networking' (PUN). Checked out their site, and seems they offer a series of different packages aimed at various network requirements in your game, was rather surprised when under the PUN page Godus appeared in the slide reel used to mention games utilising the package. And low and behold, they include Godus in their Showcase though I suspect the inclusion of Godus within the Unity Networking package slide reel is a bit of an mistake, as unfortunately last I checked Godus utilised Marmalade for the joys of ramming rusty nails under developers finger nails, right? But this probably means that Photon is the environment that is driving the Godus multiplayer efforts? If so, then a lot of the going backwards and scrapping things and turning everything into micro-lands of a very limited number of players suddenly makes a lot more sense alongside other information as well. I initially thought maybe Photon was something you originally attempted to use, but then noticed that the inclusion of Godus included rather current shots of the game that place it at least post-2.1. So seems more like Photon is related to the new efforts to figure out how to do Multiplayer with a new design? www.exitgames.com/en/PUN/Showcase#godus |
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